By Steve Rhodes
“When Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy returns home to Chicago, he knows how to charm just about everyone,” Michael Roffman and Heather Kaplan write at Consequence of Sound. “If he’s not dedicating songs to his wife, Susie, he’s throwing out sealed vinyls to thousands of adoring Midwestern fans. But, that’s just it. He’s got a lot of love for his sacred Windy City and if the scatterbrained, tight as hell opener of ‘Via Chicago’ – which has drummer Glenn Kotche in a pool of sweat by song’s end – doesn’t sell this idea, then possibly his smile and way with words does.”
They’ve got the set list, too, and a nice photo gallery. We’ve got selected YouTube highlights.

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Posted on October 20, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
Ofman: “The Bears’ offensive line was exposed as a threat to its own quarterback who, by the way, is starting to make we wonder whether he shares a tiny bit of DNA with Rex Grossman.”
Coffman: “We’ll still be hoping for more as we go forward, but considering the fact that the Bears had no running game whatsoever, it was a decent day for the signal-caller.”
CeaseFire Wire
The Tribune on Sunday promoted on its front page an editorial inside the paper claiming that the anti-violence program CeaseFire was now an indisputable success and, in fact, the answer to the violence raging through the city.

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Posted on October 19, 2009

By Natasha Julius
You don’t need any saucy tweets to know we’re working our pants off for you.
Market Update
If you’re looking for a quick flip in the next ten months or so, Relics are about to go through the roof.

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Posted on October 17, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
A lot of folks in Sun-Times’s story today about the Blagojevich patronage machine are calling the clout lists the paper’s reporters got their hands on nonsense.
And in many cases that might be true. It’s not always clear how someone’s name ends up on these lists – though, curiously enough, it’s always the same people whose names you find when these lists emerge into public view.
But even I’m willing to grant some benefit of the doubt until or unless we know exactly who recommended whom for jobs and why. In many cases the Sun-Times reports on just that. Other cases are less clear.
On the other hand, in many cases I’m going to presume guilty into proven innocent. These are those cases – and you’ll see why:

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Posted on October 16, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
“House Speaker Michael Madigan forged ahead Wednesday on a plan to limit campaign donations – with a big exception for the dollars he and other leaders dole out to ensure lawmakers’ election and reward loyalty,” the Tribune reports.
“The move by the veteran leader would serve the dual purposes of putting his Democrats on record in support of a major ethics reform while simultaneously preserving his power as the state’s longest-serving House speaker and chairman of the state Democratic Party. Political party donations would also be unlimited under the plan.”
This has got to end. Michael Madigan is a menace. He must be destroyed.

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Posted on October 15, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
1. Replacing the Olympic Village. Funny ideas for a sad situation.
2. Call 911. Reading With Scissors is on fire.
3. “Film history is littered with the carcasses of unfinished films, scraps of film tests, legendary ideas that never got off the ground,” our very own Marilyn Ferdinand writes in her latest installment of the city’s best Chicago International Film Festival coverage.
“Among them, the aborted Inferno, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s attempt at trying to make a film in the style of the Nouvelle Vague, is one of the more notorious. Clouzot, scorned by the auteurs of the French New Wave for his tightly scripted and controlled film style, immersed himself in the pop/op culture of the 1960s. He engaged France’s biggest star at the time, Romy Schneider, to play Odette, the lead character, and Hollywood backers gave him a blank check to create this internalized tale of jealousy. He compiled highly detailed storyboards and started an elaborate series of optical tests in preparation for this half color/half black-and-white film. He began principal shooting in the resort town of Garabit in 1964. The film floundered, and Clouzot abandoned it after he suffered a heart attack during shooting.”

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Posted on October 14, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

Jim DeRogatis gives Bob Dylan’s new Christmas album zero stars today, but his review sure makes it sound fantastic to me!
For example:
“When the star stumbles through ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ he sounds like the family’s disinherited black sheep embarrassment, delivering the sentiment as a threat rather than a promise.”
Perfect!

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Posted on October 13, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
Ugh. I’m feeling really groggy and there’s also a ton of stuff I didn’t get to over the weekend that I really need to get to. I suppose a central irony to this whole venture is that the news keeps distracting me from constructing this as a business. It’s hard to stay on top of everything. Stupid Olympics. Stupid Obama. Stupid Daley. You’re bankrupting me!
Anyway, we do have a few things to offer today, and we’ll be back with a full Beachwood tomorrow.
* “You win because of the quarterback,” George Ofman writes. “Bears General Manager Jerry Angelo uttered those prophetic words at the beginning of the year. And now the Denver Broncos are saying the same thing.”

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Posted on October 12, 2009

By The Beachwood Nobel Nomination Affairs Desk
The Weekend Desk Report will not appear this weekend, what with our very own Weekend Desk Editor Natasha Julius celebrating the success of her greatest prank yet. And to think the rest of us here at Beachwood HQ thought the Nobel Peace Prize committee would never fall for her Barack Obama nomination. After all, it was written in crayon. Oh well.

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Posted on October 10, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
I’m stunned by the Nobel Prize news too.
*
But seriously, I’m fairly certain that Barack Obama himself thinks this is a crock. He may be a phony, but he’s not a dummy.
*
I’m reminded of Obama’s statement to frenzied reporters upon his seating in the United States Senate: “I’ll let you know when I actually do something.”

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Posted on October 9, 2009